Romance Novelist

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Don’t Judge A Book By It’s Cover (Except Everybody Does)

I am one lucky author. I hit the motherlode when I found Colleen Clarke at Mystique Book Designs. Colleen is responsible for all the amazing covers on my Seeder series, and at a more than reasonable price. I found her on a website featuring premade ebook covers, that I used to find the cover for “Naughty or Nice”, and she’s been terrific to work with.

This week, I had a special challenge for her.

You see, I wrote a young adult novel, under my alternate pen name (Britt DeLaney is for erotica only). This one is a Sci-Fi/Fantasy kinda thing, but unlike a lot of YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels, it is completely devoid of vampires, werewolves, angels, demons and dystopian futures. In short, it’s different.

My protagonists are teenagers, but they’re not dying of cancer, fighting an eating disorder, bullied for their LGBT lifestyles, or contemplating suicide in a sarcastic way. And that, apparently, is what the editors and agents are looking for right now. I kept getting “Great book and I loved every minute of it – but not the kind of book I’m buying/repping right now.”

Then I heard about the contest being run over at Swoon Reads, a division of MacMillan Publishing. I loan them my novel for six months, people read it and give feedback and then vote on it. The novels with the highest number of votes get a publishing contract. And if my book doesn’t pass muster – well, I get to take that feedback and rework my book, and then I’ll probably self-publish, since I’m making pretty good money already doing that.

The only catch was I had to submit by tomorrow, and I had to have my own cover art or use their bland template. So I reached out to Colleen and WHAM. She knocked it out of the park, and with ONE DAY of turnaround. God, do I love her. And I love, love, love my book cover.

You do have to register on the site to read (you cannot download anything) with minimal personal information, and other than the email they send confirming your registration, you won’t be spammed, promise. Their e-reader is user friendly (click right to advance the page, left to go back) and formats for PC, phone and tablet.